Idolater
by paynesgrey
Summary: Ten years go by after Kagome stumbles out of the well to her own time alone and victorious, and Souta comes to believe that he is the one that will protect her now, for reasons fueled by obsession and idolatry. WARNING: INCEST AND ANGST. ONESHOT


**Idolater**

Steady beads of rain tapped against the glass as she gazed out her window. The rain began to pound out restless memories inside her head as she stared at the Shinto shrine outside her apartment.

It was a shrine like any other, but it had no well house and no great tree. She sighed, remembering that beating rain and invisible well houses reminded her of that one day lodged inside her brain constantly resurfacing.

She had drug herself out of the well house ten years ago while it was raining like this, and her uniform was drenched in blood that was not her own. The completed pink Shikon jewel was gripped tightly in her palm, and she had returned victorious but alone. The jewel had soon vanished after that, fading from existence after she made a silent wish to end the eternal struggle and free the world from its plight.

And then she tried to move on from there, mourning and then faking life while blocking out those scarring memories. Everything became a reminder, and even worse, things that silently laughed at her loss became closer in proximity every day.

The lock on the door creaked. She heard a grunt and a heave, and then it slid open coarsely.

"I'm home," he said, and Kagome dared not to look. But eventually she would have to face him because he was the only thing she had left, even in her own true world.  
She dug her nails into the jagged windowsill to give her mind focus on physical pain rather then the onslaught of a fairytale fallacy that she had to endure everyday.

"Welcome home," she said in her usual mocking chipper voice, but her forceful effort made him scowl. "Did you have dinner?" She turned her head around to face him, only to focus her eyes on the dust of the floor.

She always had trouble looking at him, and he didn't know how much he had hurt her in this way, but he couldn't help it. He truly believed he was the only one that could protect her. And he believed he had been born for this.

"No, I waited because I thought I'd just make ramen," he said gruffly, running his fingers through his scruffy long bleached hair. She glanced up at him momentarily, only to see a flash of a little boy with a different identity that quickly vanished away. She looked diverted her eyes, tears always barricaded and choked in the hitch of her throat.

'Why? Why does he do this?' she asked herself piteously every day. She had never known he had loved him so much. She had no idea that he had spent his every waking moment dreaming to be like him.

"_Sankon Tessou!" A little boy had weakly mustered by clawing the air with his small hand. It was an innocent gesture, but now ... _

"I'll do it," she said in a small voice, and he nodded.

He had turned away from her, glancing at the immaculate apartment. Her compulsive cleaning had impressed him, but he knew it was the only thing that kept her from going crazy by her own past.

'She's always taking care of me, even before then …' and he looked away as she began to study him and become trapped in time. He smiled. Yes, he truly felt that he was 'him,' and he was supposed to be at her side always.

She frowned when he took pleasure in her gawking at him.

'Could it be true?' She had started second guessing herself. She remembered telling him many times the stories of her travels and the dire finality of the boy she had truly loved. She remembered he would watch her with fascination as she went through the motions of every scene, more as an outsider than a participant in the story. He knew she was trying to detach herself from them, to protect her heart from the memories so she wouldn't thoroughly feel the pang of loss. But as she was moving her heart away from those memories, he was moving into them.

And after she decided to no longer tell him any more of her living fairytale, he begged her to continue again and again.

The stories submerged into him, and he was addicted to hearing them. He had to hear them so he could learn about him. He became the hero of the stories, and then her brother's transformation soon took shape. Soon she saw glints of gold in his brown eyes, and he grew his hair long and wild, bleaching it stark white to pay homage to the closest person he knew as a brother.

"_Inu-ni-chan! I need your advice," he had asked her gruff companion one day about love, trying more and more to become a man. He was nervous and not sure how to approach the subject, but he was sure that he could trust Inuyasha to help him. He could trust Inuyasha to solve anything. _

He sat on the couch as she studied him, and he crossed his arms within his oversized red windbreaker and then leaned against the couch. He was wearing jewelry now with onyx beaded pearls circling around his neck. He opened his eyes and met hers, and she almost jumped.

Jewelry wasn't the only thing he displayed.

"What are you looking at, idiot?" he snorted, awaiting her answer in the cruel silence. She turned around shaking her head to mask the shivering. The long bleached hair was enough. The red clothing was enough, and the attitude was just as bad. But now he used jewelry and contacts?

Her body quavered again.

Golden eyes shifted from her form back to the powered off TV, and she knew he was watching his own reflection in the dark reflective screen.

In ten years he had transformed himself, trying to complete this role. He acted so convincingly that she almost believed him. Deep down inside she wanted to believe him.

She turned to the kitchen listlessly, fighting the urge to completely succumb to everything he was becoming.

_"Hey sis, if you're Kikyo's reincarnation then maybe I'm somebody's reincarnation too!" Her little brother had said after she had told him the tale about the twentieth time. _

_She smiled. "Of course you are, Souta." _

"_Maybe I can figure out who it is!" He beamed childishly. _

_She laughed at his enthusiasm. "Silly, we can't hold onto the memories of our previous incarnations." _

"_But…" He seemed slightly troubled by this. "But I can almost feel it, Sis. I was once someone great like Inuyasha." _

_She weaved her fingers through his hair and patted his head. "I'm sure you were, Souta." _

Suddenly, as she was about to turn the stove on to boil the water, she was embraced from behind. She froze, her heart dizzying to his warmth. Inuyasha had embraced her this way several times at the ends of their battles. And with all her thoughts buzzing in her head that Inuyasha could be living inside her brother made her feel weak, desperate to participate in this charade.

"Souta," Kagome whispered, and she suddenly felt ill that she was feeling this way when she was being embraced by her own brother, her younger brother who at one point had been smaller than her.

He was tall now, and his once scrawny arms fleshed out with adult muscles. His long wild hair had fallen to the sides of her face. He was silent, breathing heavily in her ear beside her. He tightened his grip around her as if she would give up on him.

"Kagome," his voice echoed in her heart, mimicking the chords of Inuyasha's voice preserved in memory. She whimpered, and she suddenly wished he would call her 'Sister' so that she could squirm out of this forbidden web.

She laughed lightly almost crying, and she began to fend off his deep affections. She continued to work the stove, watching the flame rise in fascination as she turned the knob. "What has gotten into my brother? Bad day at school?"

He sighed, blanketing her neck with his heated breath. She shivered again only to straighten her back and treat it as a common reflex. Then he buried his head into the nook of her shoulder and muffled.

"It's not that, Kagome," he whispered almost sensually, and she felt terror and confusion rise from the depths of her belly.

'Please call me 'Sister,' she wanted to scream, but the words couldn't come out. She garbled her next phrase.  
"Wha – what is it?" She asked hesitantly, praying that his problem was alien to her.

He moved her around to face him. She hesitated to look into his eyes and be caught within a dangerous trance, and she stared at bills piling up at the kitchen counter, a safer place than staring at him.

He directed her chin to meet his gaze, and she felt her heart retreat back in anxiety.  
"You never go out anywhere outside your office. You're always alone, and I'm worried about you."

"Ha! Me? Why are you worried about me? I'm fine; you should worry about yourself," she said sternly, trying to break free of his grasp, but he held onto her so strongly. "Now kindly let me go, Souta, or I'll beat you into the floor! You can't just grab me like this!"

"And why not?" he challenged, his voice dangerous and his grip tight.

"I – I don't like it!" she said truthfully, squirming more to get free. He wouldn't budge.

"Keh, you've never complained before," he said hugging her tightly, and she directed her attention to the side. She noticed his long fingernails, and she felt even more frightened when she realized he was growing his nails out too. He wasn't taking care of them either, and they looked sharp and coarse, just like claws.

"I don't know what you're talking about. When you were little, you hated the idea of hugging me. Mom used to force you…"

"I'm not talking about that," and he whipped her head around by her chin to face him again. She gave him a defiant look. She met his faux golden eyes under his furrowed unkempt brows. She felt a tug in her core as she began to squint, letting the illusion take place before her.

"Please," she begged. "Souta, we talked about this. There's no way you could be Inu –"

"You don't know that!" he roared, shoving her against the counter. She looked at her brother sympathetically, ashamed that he had come this far.

"You don't know how I felt about him – when I was with him. I felt more alive being next to him. Knowing that he was with you protecting you everyday, I wanted to be strong like that too. And when you came back alone, broken and barely alive, you needed to be protected again. I knew the only one who could protect you was I. Meeting him and getting to know him, he was only setting me up for the life I was going to one day have …"

"No, you can't possibly believe that! Souta, you have know idea what you're saying!" She shook her head and yelled at him, trying to bring some sense to him – and mostly to bring reality to herself. His rationale was so honey-sweet, a forbidden flavor that she was desperate to taste.

Inuyasha had been dead for over five hundred years, and in her heart she wanted to truly believe that he had been reincarnated. Even though he wouldn't be the same person, it would be his 'soul,' and he would automatically be drawn to her again.

Thus, Souta's dream and obsession had dangled this impossible wish in front of her like ambrosia, and she just wanted to reach out and obtain it. She hoped and believed that through all the suffering of losing her friends and then losing her mom and grandpa soon after, that she deserved some sort of reward for withstanding it all. She tried to believe that even though her first love was dead he would come back and stay with her like he promised.

He would come back and make everything okay.

She was crying silently with tears sliding down her face. She felt him lean into her and place his cheek against hers, becoming wet from her unstoppable pain.

"I need you as Souta, not as Inuyasha," she said resolutely. She felt him shake his head against her cheek.

"But what about as both?" he said in a hopeful whisper. His hands fanned through her hair, and she felt ashamed again for secretly wanting this.

She embraced him in return, but that was all she tried to allow herself to give him.

However, he bent down and faced her, nose against nose and golden eyes piercing into hers searching for her one cloaked desire to reach out and believe.  
She sickened herself trying not to believe.

"Souta, let go…" she weakly pleaded with a scratchy voice. "You need to …"

"…protect you," he said before slamming his lips into hers, searching out acceptance like he did with his eyes. She screamed at the intrusion, and her mind reeled in turmoil over right and wrong. She wanted to see 'him' again, to look at him and know for sure that he wasn't truly gone. She opened her eyes, and through a haze she was drowned in the blurred shadows of his proximity, only to see the shape of his bleached white hair entwined in her fingers.

And then she felt like she was snatched away, falling and floating through time and space just as she had done to meet Inuyasha through the well into the past. The muscles in her body became filled with a numbing liquid, ripping away her past, present and future. She yearned to have her feet touch the bottom --- to become grounded so she could open her eyes to sunlight in a different time. But her falling was endless, and she reached out her hands to the sides to grip onto something, only to have them taken into someone else's grasp. She opened her eyes slowly to see Inuyasha smiling at her and pulling her closer into his body. And as she fell into him, the resemblances to her brother had soon flickered away.

He was gone, but yet he was here, and she let herself feel resolve. She fell into his body, into his memory, into the knowledge of his existence, and then she finally felt salvation.

She felt salvation even though it was all a lie.

FIN


End file.
